Lisa's Laws: Algebra, common sense keep one kid from smoking

A new proposal unveiled Monday by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg would require retailers to keep cigarettes hidden from view.

Lisa Ramirez

A new proposal unveiled Monday by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg would require retailers to keep cigarettes hidden from view.

The idea, the mayor says, is to discourage young people from picking up a deadly habit. Cigarettes would have to be kept in cabinets, under a counter, behind a curtain or otherwise concealed. Several countries — Ireland, Canada, England — already have similar laws, but New York City's is the first such proposal in the U.S.

"Such displays suggest that smoking is a normal activity," Bloomberg said. "And they invite young people to experiment with tobacco."

Now part of me likes the mayor's idea. But my kid Bella is 11 and has, for a few years now, been able to see above and past the counter at gas stations and convenient stores and to the colorful wall of cigarettes behind the register, and I don't think the sight of a store's cigarette inventory will ever tempt her to smoke.

Because Bella is learning algebra.

I never buy cigarettes, and neither does her dad. But she has noticed when other people buy them, and I have to say, she thinks they're nuts, and algebra has led her to this conclusion. (She also thinks they're making a terrible choice in regards to their health, thanks to a lifetime of anti-smoking messages from everyone she knows and her knowledge that smoking killed her Grandma Maureen, whom she only knows from photographs.)

But back to why they're nuts. She may be a kid, but she's figured out money. She's also noticed that a pack of cigarettes goes for as much as $10. And she has witnesses the awkward dance between cashier and customer, in which the customer leads and the clerk follows and which goes something like this:

Customer: "A pack of blah-de-blah 100s, please."

Clerk: "These?"

Customer: "No, the 100s, in the red pack."

Clerk: "These?"

Customer: "No, those are menthol."

Clerk: "Sorry, I don't smoke. These?"

Customer "Yeah. No. The 100s. In the long pack. Over. The other way. Keep going. There. You got it. Stop! Those. Gimme those."

Clerk: "That'll be $10."

Bella has also come to realize that the cigarette dance is an opportune time to slip a Reese's or a Butterfinger onto the counter, since I'm apt to say OK because I'm distracted by the aforementioned dance, in awe and wondering when it was that the cigarette selection became so vast and so complex, convinced that back when I quit in the 1990s there was nothing but Marlboro, Winston, and Newports, plus some really skinny ladies' cigarette that my dad's girlfriend favored, probably because my dad wouldn't bum them off her, even if he was out of Winstons. I mean, if I'm remembering right, all the brands could fit in a single vending machine, and even so the top row was usually taken up by Marlboro reds.

Anyway, Bella also knows some algebra, thanks solely to her sixth-grade math teacher. She knows that $10 is hard to come by, and that a Cadbury Crème Egg cost about 50 cents. If she had $10 and found herself in a store loaded up with cigarettes and Cadbury Cream Eggs, she would never, ever consider buying the cigarettes and instead would figure out how many Crème Eggs she could get. Her algebraic equation — with the Cadbury Egg being "e" — would look like this this:

.50e = 10

The answer is e=20 Cadbury Crème Eggs, enough for her and everyone at her lunch table, except for Donald, who only likes white chocolate and for whom she would likely pick up a little white chocolate bunny.

So sure, the mayor and the city and all of us should do everything we can to keep kids from smoking. But the solution may come down to a little math, a whole lot of chocolate, and the good sense of an 11-year-old.